Deadly Little Missing
by Jules Kelly
Summary: She always came back, but now she was nowhere to be found. Dwight, Lancelot at heart, went out to find her, but uncovered something more than just a missing friend. Something that could tear the whole city apart.


Disclaimer: I'm not even going to kid myself and say that I own Sin City and all of its characters because I don't. That belongs to Frank Miller, who is a genius I might add.

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The snow was falling gently enough to bring about the sick feeling of the holidays, giving, and all that good junk. I was standing with my face pressed again the cold window pane while looking out upon the world below. A couple of the ladies were still walking the streets even though it was a practical North Pole outside, and they were dressed in nothing but fishnets and stilettos. The girls of Old Town are funny like that. Whether its snow, rain, drought, tornado, earthquake, or radioactive fallout, they'll be out walking the streets and making a fat profit off the lonely boys in Sin City. Which pretty much accounts for the entire population. 

"What are you looking for out there?" a sultry voice said from behind me.

"Nothing," I lied through my teeth.

"It has to be more than nothing. Nothing is just a homely little girl hoping her cousin will take her to the prom so she doesn't feel so bad about herself. You might give nothing the time of day, but you wouldn't be looking her up and down like she's a pin-up. I know you to well, Dwight. Now tell me what you are looking for." It was more of an order than a question. Everything she says comes out like that.

"I said it was nothing. Now would you lay off it, Gail," I'm lying again, and she knows it.

"Look at me," she ordered, and I couldn't help but turn my gaze towards her enticing voice.

The room is quite bare compared to other women's apartments that I have had the chance to be in. A table had been pushed up against the dingy off-white wall across from me. One leg had been ripped off and then replaced with electrical tape. A bed was set up in the center of the same wall, and its state mirrored that of the table. She was lying in the middle of it clothed in nothing but what she was born with and positioned in one of her enticing poses that could make even the Pope run for a cold shower. Her tan skin looked so smooth from where I was standing, and her dark eyes looked even more inviting. Normally, I would melt right on the spot into a giant glob of goo, but my mind was distracted like Gail suspected.

"I knew it. You are thinking about someone else. You are thinking about her, aren't you?" Gail said, the words speeding to find their way out of her mouth and past the beautiful red lips hoping that they just might skim them on the way out and get a taste of her lipstick.

I did not even bother to answer her question.

"She will be fine. She's been gone before for more than a day, and she's been fine. Miho can take care of herself. You know this."

"Do I?" It was a question more to myself for I knew that the beauty on the bed could not account for my thoughts.

"You're a bastard, Dwight. I'm laying here on the bed completely ready for you, and you are thinking about saving someone else. Someone who doesn't need saving in the slightest bit. Yeah, I would be worried if it was another one of the girls but not Miho. She's a big girl now. She can take care of herself."

"Yeah, she can take care of herself. I know that, but this weather bothers me. It's snowing even harder now than when you first started bombarding me with useless questions."

The bed creaked as she got up off the mattress. Each of her footsteps made a slight echo in my head as she crossed the room to the window that I stood in front of her. She wrapped her arms around the width of me, and I was immediately immersed in her warmth upon contact. I didn't even notice I was that I had been felling that cold

"Come on, Dwight. Give it up already. It's late."

"Is it?"

My voice seemed to falter slightly. Almost as if I saw the words I had just spoke still floating amongst the particles of oxygen in the atmosphere. Why was I worried? It was Miho after all. Deadly Little Miho. The one that I had seen chop off a man's head with one swing. She was a master of many weapons: the katana, bow and arrows, knives, throwing stars, and probably everything else that had the ability to suck the life out of someone. So, why this awful feeling? Why was I suddenly so unsure of her?

"I'm going," I announced as I slinked my way out of Gail's tight grip. She was holding onto me like she had won me at the fair by bursting a couple of balloons with dull darts.

"You're a bastard like I said before," she said in a tone that suggested I might never be welcome back in her warm embrace.

"Am I?" It was another question coming out of my mouth instead of being directed into my brain. I grabbed my jacket from where I threw it on the bedpost when I came in early and left Gail standing by the snow covered window. With one last look at her gorgeous body, the body of a goddess, I wrenched open the door and walked into the hallway.

It was colder outside than it looked from the window view I had from Gail's room. My breath hung in the air in front of my face in its vapor-like form. The tiniest of snowflakes danced in the air till they came down to land upon either the dirty ground or me. I could feel it in my dark, greasy hair. It probably looked much like dandruff, God's dandruff falling from the sky. That's all that snow is, right?

The air felt like it was frozen to the point where I was surprised that I could even move through it. My black leather jacket was buttoned up as far as the buttons were sewed onto the fabric. It wasn't my chest or arms that were cold; however, it was my hands. My naked and cold hands that hung limply by my sides. They were already turning a light shade of blue. I rubbed them together vigorously, but it didn't help. I was so cold, but another thought had taken a greater importance in my consciousness.

Was she cold? Was Miho lost somewhere out there with no way to get back home to Old Town? I hated having to use the words "home" and "Old Town" in the same sentence. This place shouldn't have ever been called that by anybody, but it housed more than one-hundred girls who shouldn't have had to resort to that style of life. Ironically, though, I was the one to complain about it more than they were.

With no idea where Miho could be and no Caddy due to the weather, I set out on foot to walk around Sin City. The snow was already beginning to make a rather thick sheet on the ground that my red Chuck Taylor's sunk right into. Already I could tell that pretty soon I would be knee deep in the white sludge.

"Miho, where are you? Are you watching me from the rooftops?" I said aloud as my eyes scanned the tops of the buildings on each side of the alley I was walking down.

It hit me then I had only been out for maybe ten minutes, and I was already starting to talk to myself. That was defiantly not good for my psyche or anything else. I noticed a woman at the end of the alley staring in my direction. Her hair was loosely put up into a white handkerchief so that a few blonde strands stuck out here and there at their own will. A long red jacket hung from her shoulders, but otherwise, she wore hardly anything else besides a lacy bra and underwear. Her dark brown eyes were staring intently at me as I approached her. Once I was only mere inches from her, she grabbed the front of my coat and pulled me closer to her.

"Looking for something?" she said. I could smell cigarette smoke and alcohol on her breath.

"No. Nothing you can help me with anyways."

"Don't underestimate me now. I know exactly what it is you need," she said as her long red nails began to dance there way along my cheek to the point of my jaw.

"Do you?"

"Yeah," she said innocently as her tongue slid the length of her puckered red lips. Her skin is pale like the snow on the ground, and I'm halfway convinced that maybe I do need her right now. That I need her to calm me down and make me feel better than I do right now.

"You don't have what I need right now," I said, shrugging off both her hands and my nagging brain.

The hooker, however, had other things on her mind, though, as she reached up to grab the back of my head and forced her mouth upon mine. Not only could I smell the cigarettes and beer that reeked from her pores, but now I could taste it. She was practically sucking the life out of me right in the alley, but I didn't make a single motion to stop her. After she pulled away, she quickly reached for the lipstick tube in one of the multitude of pockets on her red jacket to re-right her face.

"You are looking for a Japanese girl by the name of Deadly Little Miho?" she asked me after the beautiful red was planted back in its right spot.

"Yes."

"They said you would come by. They said, 'Look out for a man that goes by the name Dwight McCarthy. He's tall and handsome with pretty green eyes, a determined and grim look, and all the other things that can make girls melt.' I didn't even need the name to know it was you."

"Just who is this they?"

"Don't you understand. It's this place. This godforsaken place that they want so bad. She's not the first, and she won't be the last."

"Rooting out the girls of Old Town, huh? Trying to start a quick and silent war for their property? Is that what is going down?"

"I'm not at liberty to tell. In fact, I'm only here to see that you are taken care of."

A smirk played brilliantly upon her face as she reached into her coat pocket. Her delicate hand, however, came back out as lonely as it went. The smirk turned into a frown that distorted her face into some kind of anger that even I couldn't understand.

"My gun. Where the hell did my gun go?" she screamed as tears leaked out of her eyes, and mascara started to run its little race down her face.

"Next time, you better watch your merchandise while kissing the hell out of some guy," I said as I pulled her small handgun out of my coat pocket, unloaded it, and gave it back to her.

"You are one sneaky, sneaky son of a bitch," she playfully said as she gingerly ran her fingers over her prized firearm.

"Next time you see them," I told her as I was walking away, "Tell them that their quick and silent war on Old Town will be quick, but it isn't going to be so silent. Not while I'm around anyways."

I was probably fifteen feet away from her before she spoke anything in reply.

"I will see you again, Dwight McCarthy. My name is Rita, so don't forget it."

I turned around to look at her but was only greeted by the echo of her voice bouncing back from another alley. She was gone just as fast as she came or maybe faster. I wasn't as cold anymore, but I was now more worried than anything else. Deadly little Miho had gone Deadly Little Missing, and I had no idea how long they would keep her alive. All I knew now was that the answers lied somewhere in the deep, stinking pile of trouble called Sin City.

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A/N: Oh man, my first ever Sin City fanfic. Please review. It would make me estatic. Almost as estatic as if Clive Owen came up to me and said, "Julie, you are raging fantastic." Anyways, have a great one everyone. 


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